All she does is sit
alone in her room
painting pretty pictures
of albino-eye poppies,
indulging in their scent.

How can her oils and pastels
perfume a room so much
that even the smallest, most untouchable insects
experience her kaleidoscope bliss?

She doesn’t look past her window,
she says she’s seen enough
(in brush strokes and through pale smoke).

She’s held great grizzlies in her arms
(forming intimate connections),
grown flowers from her hair
(her mind – the best kind of fertilizer),
and hopped every wall there ever was
with every sheep there ever was
(just to keep herself asleep).

But then she exhales.

Alone in a smoggy room,
a single shadow cast against a wall
covered in visions that she just doesn’t quite remember.

She lives in disappointments,
so she lives for inhalation
dreading the end of her respiration
at which point
she sits and watches
her dreams,
her future,
her legacy
smolder away, her

Poppy Bound Heart.